Chapter 22
22
T his time I have a choice.
And I choose to tape up the remaining boxes.
I slap packing tape on top of every box with more excitement than I have ever mustered, after putting all of my belongings back into the cardboard boxes and rubber tubs from which they came.
Between all the calamity of packing and moving, I haven’t had time to think.
Good fucking riddance is all I have to say this time around. Saying goodbye is usually not an easy task for me, but this time, the words flow off my tongue with ease.
I’m ready to go.
I’m ready and I don’t have to convince myself this time.
The first time I walked into this apartment I was a blubbering, miserable mess. But I’m not just a partitioned piece of my old self anymore. I will leave this place a puzzle that is a little bit more put together.
It wasn’t anything Jae did. Love is not a cure—but letting it back into my life, even in the most minuscule of forms—has healed me in the ways I had ached for.
Holding a hand through a balmy walk in the park, basking in the sunshine on a bench.
Watching someone from across the room, knowing you’re on their mind.
Placing the last piece of fish on someone else’s plate or buying a slice of cake on the way home.
Sharing a bed with a warm body because home is wherever they are.
A home is not the four walls that surround you.
No, I am not miserable any longer. Nothing is out to get me.
It’s the kind of summer night where the sky won’t let go of the sun, the bars are open till midnight, and everyone is fifteen minutes late because they stop to admire the flowers or pet the stray cat or call their mom. Even though we can’t see them, the stars admire us from above.
It’s been a month since Jae asked me to move in, and today, I did. Jae and I hauled all of my boxes ourselves, and now we sit on the stoop of our building, drinking iced tea straight from the bottle. This man truly loves me too much. He closed the restaurant for the day to help me.
Lily is stretched out on the concrete in front of us. I was almost more worried about Lily’s adjustment than my own, but she and Young-mi have become fast friends. Mae and Young-mi garden in the small terrace in front of the stoop, and soon Jae will have fresh squashes and peppers and herbs to cook with.
I squeeze Jae’s shoulder, stand up and walk through the vestibule to the apartment door. Grant’s cabinets were installed last week. I put my easels in the studio, Lily’s dog beds in the living room, and my crackers in the kitchen cabinet.
I have my own cup of water on the bedside table.
My own mugs in the cabinet.
My shampoo and conditioner in the shower.
But it’s my presence in this apartment that makes it mine. For the good and the bad, I’ll be here for the memories made within these four walls. As long as this is where Jae and I are, I’ll call this place my home.
I hear quiet footsteps through the entryway as I stand in the kitchen. That damn love of my life. I’ve never loved someone the way I love him.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, his frame filling the doorway. Jae’s hair has gotten much longer over the summer, and it flops in his face. I’m obsessed with running my hands through it.
My shoes tap along the floor as I walk over to him, my arms reaching out for him, and he automatically wraps me into a hug where I breathe in his scent. T here’s something so addictive about him, I can’t stop inhaling him.
“I was just worried about how much I’m not worried.” I laugh and look up at him. His brown eyes are alive and sparkling. Jae’s hands travel down to my waist, wrapping behind me.
“There are so many mysteries inside you I’ll never understand, Riley.”
“I’m not worried, for real. I promise.” I smile sheepishly and plant a kiss on his cheek before leaning back on the doorframe across from him, and the old hardwood creaks from my weight. “I’m feeling pretty peaceful, actually,” I admit.
“You are?” Jae questions my statement. “What have you done with the real Riley?”
“Yeah,” I confirm with a grin.
I pause for a minute, to make sure I say what I really want to say.
“I’m happy I’m here,” I tell Jae.
“I’m happy you’re here, too,” he answers, with a kiss to my temple. He takes my hand and walks me to the stoop, our iced tea sweating on the steps, but I pull him back into the vestibule.
“Jae.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you,” I tell him, sincerity covering any fear. “I’m in love with you. I just want you to know I’d choose you a thousand times over. I’ll always love Grant, but I would choose you.”
“I never doubted you, Riley.” Jae’s smile is empathetic.
“I just had to say it aloud.” I’m not going to cry this time, but I preemptively bat my eyes. “I just love you so much.” It makes it more real when I say it. I place a kiss so delicately on his lips when he wraps a hand around the back of my head to pull me in closer. I get a taste of his tongue and then he links an arm around mine and pulls me towards the stoop.
“Let’s go outside,” he whispers into my mouth.
The sun finally melts into the sky, and Jae’s sisters are all arriving for a late dinner. Mae and Umma pet Lily, Izzie leans on her car parked in the space in front, and Kelly is talking on the phone, sitting on the curb. There’s a mountain of cabbage waiting to be turned into kimchi in our refrigerator, and I look forward to Jae’s sisters telling me how I’m doing it all wrong.
Since meeting Jae, the worst thing I’ve decided about grief isn’t the crying, the lack of intimacy or the paperwork. It’s the tearing apart of a family. If it’s just the two of you, it tears your family in half, one part never to return.
I had never been close to my parents, and Grant was the only one I could count on for so long. Group therapy had been no replacement. But there was Stuart.
Meeting Jae gave me a family back, and I didn’t know how much I needed it until I was sitting on the stoop of a new apartment, watching my dog get loved on, watching two girls bicker over a borrowed sweater, and watching my future mother-in-law count radishes.
I’m still not one to be good with explanations, and lord knows it took me long enough to figure out that grief doesn’t have an explanation. It doesn’t have to have one.
The fortress around my heart has been knocked and kicked down, not just by Jae, but by me. By months, years of group therapy. By my own hard work. I took my grief and turned it back in on itself. On the outside, nothing has changed. I paint. I kiss him, and I cry about it.
When does grief turn into guilt? When does guilt turn into punishment?
Guilt is grief. Grief is a testament to how deeply you loved. And if you’re lucky, you loved deeply and thoroughly. You don’t deserve to be punished for being human.
I don’t dream about losing him.
I don’t dream about choosing between them.
The two paths of my life that had forked, are now intertwined. Grant’s cabinets hold Jae’s pots and pans. Grant’s brass sconces light up Jae’s bedroom. Our bedroom.
I don’t ask myself those questions anymore.
I am the picture-perfect happy family, even on my own. I am everything I used to hate.
A couple, holding hands, laughing in the vegetable aisle of the grocery store.
A woman buying three bouquets of flowers for seemingly no good reason, other than she can.
A normal fucking person who doesn’t cry on the train.
I am everything I still hate, too.
I’m sad that Grant doesn’t get to experience the things I am now. But his death is not in vain. I live and love because I loved him, and I do because I owe it to myself to make up for the time I spent not letting myself do those things.
Being happy does not negate the grief I felt or will feel, so I should just let myself feel the sunshine on my face, the bustle of the city around me, and the bubbles of joy that appear whenever I look at Jae.
I took my time. And now I’m happy.